


growing wings through her skin

by mortaltemples



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Backstory, F/M, Gen, Introspection, POV Female Character, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, julia is not here to be your lost lenore, julia is queen of the syndicate until i say otherwise, julia-centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-14
Updated: 2013-03-14
Packaged: 2017-12-05 08:01:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/720719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mortaltemples/pseuds/mortaltemples
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s like this: you weren't born poor. You’re not a gutter rat. You weren't plucked off the street by some guy with a cruel name and a sword on his hip. That’s not how these things work. What kind of girl would choose this life anyway?</p><p>No, you were born into luxury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	growing wings through her skin

**Author's Note:**

> I own nothing. Title comes from Charles Bukowski's novel, Post Office.

It’s like this: you weren’t born poor. You’re not a gutter rat. You weren’t plucked off the street by some guy with a cruel name and a sword on his hip. That’s not how these things work. What kind of girl would choose this life anyway?

No, you were born into luxury. Your grandfather was one of the elders, breathing out commands until he passed away whilst sitting on his throne (No one _quits_ ). You grew up around guns - around bullets and blood and betrayal, so you took all of that inside you, like inhaling the contents of Pandora’s box, like _becoming_ it yourself, leaving no room for hope because the rest of it fills you right up, nearly to the very top. And that little gap where hope should be? That gets filled up, too - by craving. What you crave is _power_ , you can’t escape the influence of your blood, after all.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting power - it’s what you’d been taught to do, what you want to do, so when you meet him he’s young and terrifying and he is from the gutter and, shit, you’d be a fool to trust him, a fool to go within ten feet of a guy who carved his cruelty into his name, made it his sole defining trait. But it’s not that that makes you want him, no, it’s the fact that you can see, so clearly, how he’s going to change everything. It’s in his walk - its arrogance, its attempt at swagger. He’s so brazen he just might make it and in case he does, you want to be right there watching it burn with him. This is a house of cards - run by old men in a world created for the young and violent, and whatever happens, you can see in his eyes that he’s going to be the one to blow the whole thing down. You’ve always been a survivor, so you choose him.

He thinks it’s an endorsement from the elders, you can tell by his condescending smirk as he kisses a trail down your neck and smoothly unzips his pants. He’s a fool. An arrogant, selfish fool if he thinks that you are some kind of reward. As if the elders could ever ‘give’ you away - you are your own beast, but you understand the way the tide works and you will deal with his arrogance if it means survival. Nevertheless, he surprises you - he’s attentive, in his own way, his name a mask and not his identity, not yet, at least. He craves power more than you do. You want it because power is life, it’s _survival_. He wants it because he wants loyalty. Because he’s never had it before and he thinks that standing on top of the pile is the only way to earn it and the only way to the top of the pile is to kill everyone in front of him. You’re not heartless - neither of you are. You both care, in your own way. You cannot spend a certain amount of time and intimacy with someone without some kind of affection developing. You don’t miss him when he’s away - fighting or killing, but your bed sheets get cold and you don’t like that anymore. You don’t appreciate the extra space in your apartment and your life is starting to look more and more like a gilded cage.

Occasionally he mutters to you about some stray he picked up - a gutter rat with potential, he says. You smile and think of his firm hands squeezing your hips, your hands in his silver hair while you bite down on his earlobe - thoughts of a tall man with mismatched eyes and a cocky smile won’t cross your mind for years. Even when you finally meet this new gutter rat, you can feel his eyes on you, but at the end of the day, it’s the man who will change this town that you take into your bed.

Still, you don’t turn him away when he shows up on your doorstep half-dead, and you do your best for him. Your education’s been very...complete - you’ve seen gunshot wounds nearly every week since you could walk, so you picked up a few things. Why he came to you, you don’t know. What you do know is the way he looks up at the night sky, slouched in a chair by your window like he owns the place, makes your heart clench and your brain go ‘shit’.

_Shit._

You were wrong, about Vicious, about him being your way to burn down the old and stand up with the new - that man will never stand. He’ll burn it and leave it in ashes, he won’t ever be a leader. This one won’t either, not because he can’t but he simply doesn’t give that much of a shit. You’re surprised by him in so many ways - mainly how he can eat so much and remain so skinny, and how he can look innocent after everything you know he’s done. He’s young - younger than you, and maybe that’s what the difference is. Maybe one day it’ll hit him like a brick when he’s walking down the street and suddenly he won’t slouch because he’s too tall to fit comfortably into a room, but because of the weight on his shoulders. Even before you took him as your lover, the thought of that would be enough to make you cry.

He never makes a pass at you, not once, even though you know he wants you. This is not arrogance; you can feel his eyes following you like you’re both magnets and he’s nearly recovered and you’re only human and Vicious has been gone for so long and he feels so _good_. He isn’t powerful, not in any respect. He is light and unsure and his good eye looks like the sky he’s so fond of - you have some foolish notion that by fucking him, some of that sky will bleed into you. He looks at you like you understand him and if he stays long enough naked in your bed, a strong arm thrown over your waist to keep you close as he grins into your hair, you just might. You tell him it’s a one-time thing, and he rolls his eyes - arrogance, but a different kind to the cruel one that lies behind your other lover’s (your _first_ lover’s...remember that this wasn’t supposed to happen) eyes. When he first brings you flowers, roses at that, you nearly reach for your gun - Vicious might be a fool, but this one is an _idiot_.

Both will get you killed. You know this the second you push Spike into a bathroom stall in some dive at three in the morning because waiting for privacy is just not good enough. When you’re sated, you kiss him far more gently than you meant to, the taste of you still on his lips, then you kiss the hand that cups your face. He closes his eyes and when he opens them, they’re both soft shades of brown and it makes you _ache_ to have to go home to a man whose eyes are only growing harder and you think that you should have really seen this coming. There is no ‘getting out’ for you - the Red Dragon is your blood, it’s not for you to choose your path. You’re good at what you do; good with guns and silent knives slicing open throats of those who would dare cross you. You’re not just in it deep, not like he is, you _are_ it and that is what neither of them understand.

The Syndicate is irrelevant next to who you are - daughter of the elders, born into luxury, born into murder and crime and power. Both of them, their quarrels, Vicious’ cruelty, Spike’s stars - they’re small fry next to you and it is _humiliating_. Humiliating to be fought over, to be threatened. Before you leave, you tear up Spike’s card, you shower off Vicious’ touch, you grab your gun and your keys and you _run_. Maybe you’ll end up in a ditch, maybe you’ll find some sky of your own to love, or maybe you’ll come back someday and watch Vicious burn down the house, or meet a rain-soaked Spike in the graveyard. But you need time to heal first, to wake yourself up by tearing yourself away from both dreams, empty yourself of everything that was there before - all that before clawing your way back to reality.


End file.
